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Codename: SHOGUN
As a member of the Office of Naval Intelligence, the agent known only as "SHOGUN" has had quite an auspicious career. Recruited by ONI in 2531 as part of its Insurrection pacification campaign, SHOGUN would serve as an interrogator of captured personnel. As the Insurrection faltered, he transferred to personnel extraction - the abduction of high profile targets, and ensuring the safety of high profile persons of interest. By 2549, SHOGUN had found himself working several different projects while assigned to Section Zero - the first was the development of counter-strategies to offset the Covenant's advance, and the second was the investigation of unethical, illegal and counterproductive projects undertaken by unscrupulous ONI personnel, ferreting out dozens of such projects in Operation: VORAUSSICHT. After the war, SHOGUN would continue to rise through the ranks, sped by a close relationship with ONI Deputy Director of Operations OLYNDICUS, and though he would continue to investigate the questionable projects approved by formed DDO OZYMANDIAS, he would also oversee several Naval Special Warfare projects and operations. History Pre-ONI Even after investigations by his own department, ONI Section Zero, very little is known about SHOGUN beyond some rudimentary facts. He is a caucasian male born in 2517, and possesses a New Zealand accent, indicating that he was raised either on Earth, in the Republic of New Zealand, or that he was raised on the Matariki colony. Rumour holds that he served as a UNSC soldier in the years before his recruitment by ONI, and that he was involved in counter-Insurrection operations conducted by UNICOM Special Warfare Command - perhaps the reason why he was approached by ONI. Insurrection (2531-2536) As the war for survival against the Covenant onslaught wore on, it became increasingly obvious to all that the UNSC simply could not afford to fight a war on two fronts - something would have to give. For the most part, the Insurrection would collapse on its own in all but the most entrenched rebellious sectors. In other cases, though, it had to be helped - Operation: GALULA was a covert series of strikes against prominent rebel organisations and targets, aiming to crush whatever was left of the Insurrection's leadership and fracture the disparate groups before they could band together for strength. The measures undertaken by ONI at the time ranged from counter-intelligence, assassination and abduction, overt military action and covert espionage, and it was Operation: GALULA that attracted the attentions of the ONI Deputy Director of Operations, codename OZYMANDIAS, to SHOGUN. Whatever his occupation before becoming an ONI field agent, it must have been an asset in ONI's war to destroy the Insurrection, because he quickly rose through the ranks of the GALULA team, serving as an interrogator of captured personnel, taking part in assassination and abduction operations in conjunction with UNSC soldiers, Marines and sailors, and helped formulate the strategies ONI would use to turn the United Rebel Front's leaders against each other, splintering apart and turning against itself before a UNSC mop-up operation destroyed its remains. SHOGUN seems to have earned himself a reputation for strategic brilliance, and it is therefore no surprise that he would find himself reassigned to ONI Section Zero when GALULA was officially concluded, CENTCOM deeming the Insurrection a long-gone threat. Inner Colonies (2536-2549) For the next thirteen years, SHOGUN would make a name for himself among ONI internal affairs division Section Zero, quickly becoming the units rising star. Busts on Troy and New Harmony would net Insurrectionist collaborators smuggling classified materials to rebel factions, both funding and arming their supposed enemies. Further operations on Troy would uncover perhaps the most appalling project of SHOGUN's career, Project CHISEL, an augmentation research project that had run parallel to the original ORION, and subsequent SPARTAN-II and SPARTAN-III Projects, and upon which must augmentation procedures were based. Moving quickly, with cooperation from ODST special forces, SHOGUN would capture more than fifteen high-ranked members, dozens of employees, and manage to save less than two dozen would-be augmentees, out of perhaps thousands killed in the name of special warfare research. He would witness the executions of many of these war criminals personally, and insisted on death by firing squad for all those sentences to execution. The project head, Codename: OXFORD, was not among these - instead, because of the sensitive nature of much of his research, he was kept cryonically frozen to serve three life sentences. This would become a point of contention between SHOGUN and the administration of ONI, with Section III insisting that he was too valuable to waste, and Section Zero demanding that justice be served. Eventually, disgusted at the Section III stonewalling, SHOGUN would offer his resignation to the new Deputy Director of Operations, Codename: OLYNDICUS. It was not accepted. Instead, OLYNDICUS made SHOGUN an offer - head of a classified team of investigators to ferret out war crimes committed by ONI, the UNSC, and other rogue elements such as the Insurrection, the apprehension or assassination of the individuals responsible, and the neutralisation of any threats these projects may have posed to the UNSC. Better still, he promised SHOGUN that this operation would have the full backing of not only ONI Director Margaret Parangosky, but of the UNSC Security Committee itself, and would be above opposition by other authorities and that SHOGUN would be allowed to handpick his staffers. Faced with such an offer, he immediately accepted. VORAUSSICHT (2549-2552) SHOGUN's extensive counter-insurgency and internal affairs experience would come into play with Operation: VORAUSSICHT, perhaps the largest internal investigation ever conducted by the UNSC on rogue elements of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Begun in 2549, the first results of VORAUSSICHT would bring in Insurrectionist collaborators among highly classified special weapons projects, among even November Black-status projects such as EXCALIBUR, MJOLNIR and TEMERITY. Further investigations would take the investigators in new directions - the discovery that many of these infiltrations had connections to the earlier CHISEL would allow VORAUSSICHT to conclude that they were part of concerted efforts by rogue elements of the Office of Naval Intelligence, running their own special weapons/special warfare projects and operations. Furthermore, the discovery of various supersoldier programs, based on either the ORION or SPARTAN-II models, all apparently unapproved by the Security Committee and still bearing November Black status, would lead VORAUSSICHT to investigate the creation and deployment of unauthorised supersoldiers. Between 2549 and 2552, VORAUSSICHT would lay the ground work for later investigations, but the most immediate discovery was that former Deputy Director of Operations, OZYMANDIAS, had been involved with a large number of these during his time serving. With his retirement earlier in the war, he ahd disappeared, apparently managing to take a large amount of his resources and intelligence with him, for reasons unknown. Efforts to hunt him down would prove futile, hindered further by the catastrophic defeat at Reach and the devastation of Earth. In 2553, with the official cessation of hostilities with the Sangheili and the conclusion of the Human-Covenant War, VORAUSSICHT would be renewed and strengthened by the UNSC - in such a frail state of affairs, the risk that these November Black violations could be discovered by the public would have been a crippling blow to ONI, the UNSC, and the UEG, and had the potential to revive the Insurrection. Over the next thirteen years, VORAUSSICHT would discover Spartan reassignment efforts, such as INDIGO, INDIGO-II, LEONIDAS, MYSTIC and MANDATE, supersoldier creation projects such as MYRMIDON, TROJAN, VOLSUNG and GREY, biological warfare projects such as ACCRETION, GENOME, REVALATION and VENATOR, the infiltration of official November Black projects such as MJOLNIR, TEMERITY and EXCALIBUR and others, and even Insurrectionist efforts, such as PERSIAN, BLACKSMITH and YOUMA. During this time, SHOGUN would fixate on a number of characters - his former mentor, OZYMANDIAS, a rogue operative known as Codename: DRACULA, and the apprehended CAIN. Initially, the results were to be kept classified as ONI apprehended and charged personnel it deemed "rogue". However, eager to gain a propaganda coup among the civilian populace and willing to make the military (always a popular target) the scapegoat, Secretary-General Jerome Smithson ordered the involvement of the Colonial Ministry of Justice. This would backfire spectacularly when details were leaked to the media, resulting in the disclosure of classified material that would prove embarrassing for the UNSC and the UEG as a whole; though the details of the SPARTAN-II and III Programs would remain safe, the existence of CHISEL, where homeless street people were rounded up and experimented on by rogue geneticists, or Project GENOME, an experimental and failed Spartan cloning attempt, would result in a huge public backlash against the UNSC. Ironically, the UNSC and ONI would emerge from the scandal none the worse - the calamitous handling of the affair by Smithson would turn public opinion against his decision to involve civilian investigators in military matters, and the corruption that riddled it resulting in the leaks, would be more disastrous than VORAUSSICHT itself, and even then ONI pointed out that it was dealing with rogue elements - these projects had not been officially, and should never have been, approved. As the public sympathy for ONI grew, Smithson would become increasingly frustrated and paranoid, privately declaring that all his generals were working against him, and purging the upper echelons of CENTCOM of "undesirables", people who had not shown support for Smithson. Nicknamed by military persoonel the "Exodus," seven well-regarded Generals and Admirals would resign in protest at Smithson's increasing alienation of the military. The political firestorm that would result would eventually contribute to his downfall, the the outbreak of the Second Great War would see his resignation, and the return of predecessor Pierre Plantard as Secretary General, restoring both civilian and military confidence in the UNSC and UEG. Post-VORAUSSICHT SHOGUN would head VORAUSSICHT until 2565, when he assumed the position of Deputy Director of Operations, replacing OLYNDICUS. Leaving his former investigation to his successor, Codename: RAINFALL, he would serve during the Second Great War and later War of Vengeance as a member of the upper echelons of the Office of Naval Intelligence, providing his decades of invaluable experience to the conflicts. His actions during VORAUSSICHT may have saved the UNSC - with so many rogue elements loose, the UNSC would have been too stretched to fight the Governors of Contrition, and by protecting TEMERITY and EXCALIBUR the UNSC would develop ways to, if not counter, then at least withstand the threat posed by the Sovereigns. Relationships OZYMANDIAS Formerly the Deputy Director of Operations, OZYMANDIAS was the one who hired SHOGUN in the first place, recruiting him from whatever anti-insurrectionist organisation he had previously been a part of. While now back under the military command structure, SHOGUN would refuse to take a military rank, remaining a civilian Probationary Agent, then a full agent, and finally a Special Agent. Under OZYMANDIAS, SHOGUN would put his skills to work helping the UNSC clean up its mistakes, bring in traitors and insurrectionists, and otherwise free up resources to go to the front. The relationship between SHOGUN and OZYMANDIAS is a complicated one. During his term of office, OZYMANDIAS would oversee investigations into various ONI projects, shutting down some that would compromise the security of the UNSC and ensuring that others posed no such threat. Subsequent investigations conducted by VORAUSSICHT, however, would reveal that OZYMANDIAS also approved highly classified and illegal projects, such as CHISEL, and others that resulted in kidnapping, torture, and/or murder in the name of results. SHOGUN would later attempt to hunt down his former superior, for both professional and personal reasons, though never satisfactorily concluded his attempt to bring the man to justice. The betrayal of OZYMANDIAS, SHOGUN's mentor at ONI, would bring about a major psychological change in SHOGUN, and is perhaps the reason why he has strove to mentor RAINFALL. RAINFALL RAINFALL, AKA Lieutenant Janice Forrester, was originally an investigator with the UNSC Army. Finding her career stonewalled by contacts of her father, ODST Colonel Verdani Forrester, she eventually requested a transfer to Operation: VORAUSSICHT, and was personally interviewed by SHOGUN. During her tenure in the Army, she had made quite a name for herself, personally apprehending two coworkers for espionage and uncovering a smuggling ring on Mars. Now under SHOGUN's command, RAINFALL would become a major field operative, apprehending a number of important figureheads and spearheading the hunt for CAIN after his escape. Showing the most potential of his staff, SHOGUN would come to see RAINFALL as his protege, passing on his knowledge and experience to the younger agent. After the retirement of OLYNDICUS and his promotion to Deputy Director of Operations, she would take over as head of VORAUSSICHT, continuing her predecessors efforts. OLYNDICUS CAIN DRACULA Remarks *"This guy is a ghost. His service record is just a list of star systems and commendations - no battles, no dates, no places. He practically doesn't exist before 2531 - hell, we don't even know how old the guy is!" *"ONI tried a lot of things during the Great War, most of which did little to stem the tide of the Covenant. It's not surprising that they...got desperate. And then SHOGUN gets left cleaning up the mess. Did he ever catch OZYMANDIAS?" *"I heard where this guy told my cousin's friend that he'd met SHOGUN in a bar. Nice guy apparently. Said he had a kiwi accent. So maybe he was born on Earth, or maybe the Matariki colony?" *"He's made few friends among the government - after the VORAUSSICHT fiasco, he was pretty much banned from Smithson's office, and it's a tradition that's persisted - politicians seem to think he's bad luck. He tells me he votes for the communist party each election, because he doesn't want to waste a vote on the Conservatives or Liberals."